Rockets must persevere through tough part of schedule

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The Rockets cleared the air in a players-only dinner after Chandler Parsons suggested they were not taking their recent losses hard enough. (Ron Cortes/Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT)

New to the NBA as the bulk of the Rockets might be, it did not take long to understand the reality of an 82-game season.

They won’t be defined by their recent seven-game losing streak any more than they were by the five-game winning streak that preceded it. Determining what kind of team they will be, however, could come next.

The Rockets’ January schedule always was to be just about survival. Despite the crash, they have done that, with the late rally to win 100-94 Monday in Charlotte moving the Rockets to 22-21 and still (barely) among the Western Conference’s top eight teams.

But they return home (briefly) with repairs to be made that could go a long way toward determining what they will be this season.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to get in the practice gym,” Rockets coach Kevin McHale said. “This was going to be a tough, tough part of our schedule. With our team, we definitely need some gym time and some us time where we can stop and correct stuff. We have to improve, and we will.”

The low point was Saturday’s loss to Minnesota. Though the Rockets were playing their fourth game in five nights, they were playing a team with half the roster out with illness or injury and keyed by players who signed 10-day contracts that day.

Players clear the air

After the loss, with Rockets forward Chandler Parsons suggesting his teammates were not taking the defeats hard enough, they cleared the air in a players-only dinner.

“We’re going to go through tough times together,” Parsons said. “We’re going to go through great times together. Sometimes teams get numb to losing and it doesn’t bother them as much. I think with us, it’s got to hurt us more to lose than it is good to win.

“The film doesn’t lie. We see who needs to do what and where we need to get better.”

Though the results improved, many of the issues remained Monday. With nine games squeezed into 14 days, the wear and tear combined with the lack of practice time contributed to significant backsliding on the issues the Rockets have fought all season.

They have battled stretches in which they have been remarkably turnover-prone and porous defensively, especially off the dribble. As the pressure of the losing streak mounted, the ball and body movement decreased until the up-tempo, high-energy offense bogged down.

The Rockets had been making significant strides in those areas and believe they can again. If the losing streak demonstrated anything, it was that they will have to.

“It’s about time we started moving forward,” forward Marcus Morris said. “Now, the losing streak is in the past. We have to keep building.”

That won’t be easy with the Denver Nuggets, whose style matches up well with the Rockets’, at Toyota Center on Wednesday. The Rockets then begin another stretch of three games in four on the road.

In other ways, the schedule will balance out. Only the Toronto Raptors have played as many back-to-backs against rested opponents as have the Rockets. Only the Raptors will complete fewer sets of back-to-backs against rested opponents in the second half of the season.

The Rockets have lost the second half of their past four back-to-backs and are 4-9 when playing a second game in as many nights.

Avoid overreacting

Practice time should allow the Rockets to address the issues of the past few weeks, but there also was a hope that they will react to bumps in the road without careening into a ditch.

“A lot of it is attitude and perseverance,” McHale said. “We had a good roll going. All of a sudden, in the fourth quarter of the New Orleans game (the first game of the skid), the ball dried up a little bit. Everybody started saying ‘I’m going to try to get mine,’ tried pressing. What works better (is when) the ball doesn’t get sticky, the ball gets freer. There’s more cutting, more movement. We’ve done just the opposite.”